J's Theater: VOTE for CHANGE

J's Theater saying it better than I can with Flash slide show that I wish I could post here, but it's just a click away...

The same could be said about the future of the United States: It's just a click, or a punch(card), or a check mark, away depending on your county or state's voting technology.

It's your VOTE, USE IT, DON'T ABUSE IT.



Pictured left Christia Adair, Texas, 1920. Adair was "approached by suffragists to enlist the support of black women for the vote. Adair states: Back in 1918 Negroes could not vote and women could not vote either. The white women were trying to help get a bill passed in the legislature where women could vote. I said to the Negro women, 'I don't know if we can use it now or not, but if there's a chance, I want to say we helped make it.'"

Despite the success of the suffragist efforts Black women in Texas were still refused the right to vote based on race. During her work with the NAACP Adair continued to pursue this struggle and became "one of the first black women to vote in the Texas Democratic primary in 1944."

Below images from Freedom Summer 1964 Voting Rights activism, right McCabe County, Mississippi activists































Below, Lowndes County, Alabama Voting Activism, 1960s:













Today...

Endnote:
• Selma to Montgomery National Voting Rights Trail, established by Congress in 1996.
• January 2008, NPR StoryCorps Facilitator weblog on traveling "Highway 80 through 'Bloody Lowndes'" Lowndes County, Alabama, one of the sites on the National Voting Rights Trail.
• NPR's StoryCorps where you can hear the podcasts of the interviews with some of the "everyday" Lowndes, Alabama voting rights activists who made possible the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and for African Americans to vote for the first time in that county in 1966.
• From Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, a website focused on documenting the ordinary people who made up the majority of Civil Rights Movement activists, an informative historical timeline: "Voting Rights History: Two Centuries of Struggle"